Every one of us has hit rock bottom at some point - those moments when it feels as if the ground has vanished beneath you and the wheels have come clean off. Life doesn’t pause, and it certainly doesn’t wait for us to recover. We either get up, or we get left behind. Unscrew Yourself is a straighttalking, deeply practical guide to becoming “giving up” resistant or “neverfold” – the kind of person who refuses to stay down, no matter how hard life or work has knocked them.

This book shows you what it really takes to build the habits, mindsets, and resilience that keep you moving forward when everything in you wants to give up.

You’ll start by understanding the world of work as it is today – unpredictable, demanding, and often unforgiving. From there, you’ll learn how to navigate tough seasons with clarity, working through the Survival and Growth Pyramid and the Survival and Growth Trio. These frameworks are designed to equip you with the essential skills, attitudes, and behaviours needed not only to endure adversity, but to grow through it.

None of us is immune to hardship. The real question is whether you’re prepared. Unscrew Yourself takes you on a practical, honest journey toward becoming stronger, steadier, and more resilient every single day. Drawing on years of handson coaching, this book gives you the tools to take responsibility for your own rise.

No one is coming to save you – but you absolutely can save yourself.

One of the few books about photography to come out of the continent and where the majority of contributors are African and work on the continent.

Going beyond photography as an isolated medium to engage larger questions and interlocking forms of expression and historical analysis, Ambivalent gathers a new generation of scholars based on the continent to offer an expansive frame for thinking about questions of photography and visibility in Africa. The volume presents African relationships with photography – and with visibility more generally – in ways that engage and disrupt the easy categories and genres that have characterised the field to date.

Contributors pose new questions concerning the instability of the identity photograph in South Africa; ethnographic photographs as potential history; humanitarian discourse from the perspective of photographic survivors of atrocity photojournalism; the nuanced passage from studio to screen in postcolonial digital portraiture; and the burgeoning visual activism in West Africa.

Run for the Love of Life is a must-read for anyone who desires to escape the day-to-day sameness of our new pandemic-informed lives, or who seeks to feel alive, inspired, and filled with a renewed enthusiasm for the year ahead.

It recounts the extraordinary journey of South African Erica Terblanche, an ordinary woman who manages to not only achieve – but excel – on the world stage of extreme distance-running in some of the most inhospitable and majestic landscapes across the planet. Raw, honest and infinitely human, this part-memoir, part-travel novel thunders through one exotic race location after the other, as the runners battle the elements and each other across the vastness of the Sahara, Atacama and Namib Deserts, the great Grand Canyon, Turkish Cappadocia and the Kalahari Desert, to name only a few.

But more than just a book on racing, what makes this novel infinitely compelling and rewarding is that in the echoes of Erica’s story, one begins to sense the pulse of one’s own potential and long-forgotten dreams. While you may laugh, cry, and forget to take a breath at times, it is inevitable that Run will spur you on to find your own bliss, that which is buried deep within your soul and body.

At its heart, Run for the love of life is a story about love, forgiveness, perseverance and growth, and about the important things in life that ultimately makes us happy. Told with wit, humour and vulnerability, it is a book that will stay with the reader long after the final page is turned.

Offering a weaning solution from expert authors based on your baby's sensory personality, Weaning Sense demystifies weaning and, using current research, gives you an easy to use, real food solution.

Grounded firmly in science and using simple and inspiring ingredient combinations with minimal equipment and quick preparation times, the authors introduce a revolutionary way to wean babies. Includes over 50 delicious foolproof recipes.

Revised edition includes:

- the science and ‘how to’ of baby-led weaning
- critical advice for supporting your baby’s gut mic robiome
- new recipes, a healthy first birthday cake and iced tea

Herbs are rewarding and versatile plants. They are easy to grow and add colour, texture and fragrance to our gardens and food.

Jane’s Delicious A-Z of Herbs is a full colour, richly illustrated, hands-on guide to growing and using these productive plants. With a detailed and richly illustrated A-Z reference of 80 plus herbs, the book covers planting and growing, medicinal and culinary uses, as well as their many healing properties.

In her book, Jane shows you how to design and maintain your own herb garden. She also provides practical advice on how to propagate, harvest and preserve herbs, as well as useful tips on how to grow them in containers.

Bulbous plants produce some of the most striking natural floral displays, and our region is endowed with the greatest number and richest variety globally. With over 1,200 naturally occurring bulb species, the Cape Floristic Region is the undisputed bulb capital of the world and the source of many species now found growing in other parts of the world, including Europe, the UK and the USA.

Bulbs of the Fynbos features 345 of the region’s more common or showy species, meticulously arranged for easy comparison and identification.

This guide features:

• detailed accounts of each species, including diagnostic features, flowering times, habitat and distribution, as well as information on subspecies and similar species
• colour photographs capturing the plants’ splendour and diversity
• an informative introduction examining the biology, structure and conservation status of fynbos bulbs, and explaining the botanical features that are essential for identification

An innovative guide with wide appeal to wildflower lovers, natureenthusiasts, hikers, students and gardeners.THE AUTHO

We live in a world that demands perfection. Big data, analytics, trend lines and averages bind us to a set of norms and values that assign a numeric worth to who we are and what we are capable of. Should we not meet established milestones or targets, not conform to the appropriate curve, or fail to live up to pre-established societal expectations, we invariably experience a sense of personal failure, worthlessness and fears and anxiety about a tenuous future. Added to this is the struggle with growing poverty and widening gaps in inequality, fractured family units, chronic stress and mental health challenges overlaid with the uncertainty and complexity of a rapidly changing world.

Yet, in truth it doesn't matter where we come from and what our historic circumstances and achievements might be. We are all capable of extraordinary lives and should not be bound by limitations, whether self-imposed or from external sources. What can unlock our fullest potential is resilience, a consummate skill that can be developed and grown throughout our lives. This reality is echoed by the likes of Albert Einstein, Oprah Winfrey, JK Rowling, Billy Jean King and Siya Kolisi, who all struggled in some way or another and overcame the restraints of their circumstances through resilience in various forms.

In addition, many resilience 'lessons' and how these are applicable to everyday life are taken from a fusion of cutting-edge science and learnings from some of the most recognizable figures in world sport, including Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Michael Jordan, Martina Navratilova and Novak Djokovic.

Thrive is a resilience manual, a practical, step-by-step guide to help you realise your fullest potential.

Every day more than three women in South Africa, on average, are murdered by their male intimate partners. This book looks at the stories of South African women who were subjected to unimaginable periods of fear and terror, who endured sustained physical, emotional and psychological attacks, all at the hands of men.

Dr Nechama Brodie explores decades of brutal domestic violence and coercive control and she examines women’s changing rights and current legal protections.

In the timber plantations in northeastern South Africa, laborers work long hours among tall, swaying lines of eucalypts, on land once theirs. In 2008, at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, timber corporations distributed hot cooked meals as a nutrition intervention to bolster falling productivity and profits. But life and sustenance are about much more than calories and machinic bodies. What is at stake is the nurturing of capacity across all domains of life―physical, relational, cosmological―in the form of amandla. An Nguni word meaning power, strength or capacity, amandla organizes ordinary concerns with one’s abilities to earn a wage, to strengthen one’s body, and to take care of others; it describes the potency of medicines and sexual vitality; and it captures a history of anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggle for freedom.

The ordinary actions coordinated by and directed at amandla do not obscure the wounding effects of plantation labor or the long history of racial oppression, but rather form the basis of what the Algerian artist Kader Attia calls repair. In this captivating ethnography, Cousins examines how amandla, as the primary material of the work of repair, anchors ordinary scenes of living and working in and around the plantations. As a space of exploitation that enables the global paper and packaging industry to extract labor power, the plantation depends on the availability of creative action in ordinary life to capitalize on bodily capacity.

The Work of Repair is a fine-grained exploration of the relationships between laborers in the timber plantations of KwaZulu-Natal, and the historical decompositions and reinventions of the milieu of those livelihoods and lives. Offering a fresh approach to the existential, ethical and political stakes of ethnography from and of late liberal South Africa, the book attends to urgent questions of postapartheid life: the fate of employment; the role of the state in providing welfare and access to treatment; the regulation of popular curatives; the queering of kinship; and the future of custom and its territories. Through detailed descriptions, Cousins explicates the important and fragile techniques that constitute the work of repair: the effort to augment one’s capacity in a way that draws on, acknowledges, and reimagines the wounds of history, keeping open the possibility of a future through and with others.

For two decades before a railway system linked southern Africa’s principal cities in the mid-1890’s, the world’s richest supplies of diamonds and gold were transported by coach and horses to distant ports for export. For Irish soldiers based at Fort Napier, Pietermaritzburg, the temptation of this fabulous wealth proved irresistible: they deserted by the score and, as members of the ciminal ‘Irish Brigade’, embarked on a spree of bank, safe and highway robberies.

Masked Raiders follows the wild exploits of legendary brigands like the McKeone brothers and ‘One Armed Jack’ McLoughlin, who ravaged the subcontinent, from the mining towns of Barberton, Kimberley and Johannesburg, to the borders of Basotholand, Bechuanaland, Mozambique and Rhodesia. With tales of heists, safe-cracking, illegal gold dealings, prison breaks and hidden roadside treasure, the book reveals the potency of the highveld’s ‘criminal heroes’.

Startling insights also reveal how the hidden grammar of brigandage informed political actions of the day, such as the Jameson Raid, and how the movement of bandits across the interior helped shape the borders of what was to become modern South Africa.

StorieKos is veel meer as net nog 'n kookboek. In StorieKos nooi Frik jou uit om saam met hom op reis te gaan vanaf die Karoo tot in Kaïro en van Rusland tot in Rome.

Dit is 'n kos-reisverhaal waarin hy sy passie vir “peasant food” of plattelandse kos deel – resepte en stories van mense en ervarings versamel oor 'n tydperk van bykans vier dekades. Hy deel die eenvoud en opregtheid van hierdie geregte wat die toets van tyd weerstaan het en deur die jare aangepas is in die kombuise van generasies van huiskokke.

Op sy reise dwarsoor die wêreld het mense hom ingenooi in hul huise en harte, die geheime van ou familieresepte met hom gedeel en het hy saam met hulle baie van hierdie disse leer kook in plattelandse kombuise en klein restaurante.

As jy dus hou van reis, mense en hul stories en boonop ook lief is vir kook, is hierdie 'n boek vir jou.

You cannot escape threats. Threats to your business, your relationships, your potential, your health. In fact, everything you love is being threatened. The question is: What will you do about it?

How you learn to respond to threats determines the trajectory of your life. If you respond with a lack of force, energy and will, you will most likely end up in a familiar place – survival mode. Many of us know this space all too well. Fortunately, there is another way.

In Dangerous, international speaker and author, Erik Kruger, reveals that when faced with a threat there is only one thing you can do: LEAN IN AND BECOME DANGEROUS. Through short, concise nuggets of insights drawn from neuroscience, coaching philosophies and working with exceptional business leaders, Erik reveals how you can become a threat to that which threatens you. He offers the tools to embrace courage, intention, and the ability to recalibrate how you think, feel, and act. To rise to the level of your challenges and then beyond.

This book is for anyone who wants to become effective against the threats in their life. If you are interested in not only embracing the challenges and obstacles that life places in your path, but in seeing them for what they really are, then welcome to the journey.

Dangerous is an invitation to becoming better, stronger, and faster. TO BECOME DANGEROUS.

STOP TELLING STORIES. START SELLING THEM!

The world is rightly obsessed with the incredible power of a good story. Unfortunately too many of us take that to mean that it is our own story that’s important. It’s not. The magic happens not when we tell our customers the story of our past, but when we sell them a new story of their future. One in which we play a part.

As a salesperson (and make no mistake, you are a salesperson) you have two jobs. Job No. 2 of the storyseller is to help your clients and customers slay their dragon. Job No. 1 of the storyseller is to help them see their dragon.

You are in the dragon hunting business, but dragon hunting ain’t easy – there’s work to be done. In this short and highly practical book, renowned speaker Richard Mulholland shares with you how to use powerful stories to change minds, drive sales, and solve problems.

Here Be Dragons isn’t just a how-to book, it is far more a why-to, and mostly a what-to-do book.

Why do some people create extraordinary impact while others with the same ability stall? This book lays out four fundamental principles grounded in science that have a multiplier effect on life and leadership and explain this paradox. It turns out it's not what talent you have – it's how you use it. The Four Principles are counterintuitive but are accessible and learnable, and their signifcant multiplier effect is explained and mathematically demonstrated.

Adrian Gore, founder and CEO of Discovery and Vitality, built a company from a single, bold idea into a global financial group serving over 50 million customers across 37 countries. He didn’t just scale a business; he created a whole new Shared-Value business model, a system so revolutionary it’s taught as a case study at Harvard Business School, and recognised by Fortune magazine as ‘changing the world’.

In The Four Principles, Gore reveals the framework and guiding principles that powered this trajectory:

• Disciplined Optimism: Why choosing optimism is the most rational path to seizing overlooked opportunities.
• Focused Urgency: Why your perceived time to make an impact is shorter than you think.
• Declared Goals: Setting bold goals triggers radical motivation and decisive action.
• The Pareto Tail: Target just a few high-power decisions to determine your life’s entire trajectory.

Eierigting is‘n regsterm wat beteken dat jy die reg in jou eie hande neem.

In ‘n grondwetlike bestel is die uitgangspunt dat die burgery kollektief hul reg om hulself te beskerm oordra aan die staat. Wanneer die staat faal en nie meer sy burgers beskerm nie, verander die situasie. Dan raak eierigting nodig.

Willie Spies skryf sedert 2016 – die jaar van Fees Must Fall in Suid-Afrika en die verkiesing van Donald Trump in die VSA – rubrieke vir Beeld en Netwerk 24.

Die rubrieke ontgin die stand van die makro-omgewing van verval van die staat waarin Suid-Afrikaners hulle bevind gedurende die jare van staatskaping, die einde van die Zuma-bewind, die EFF, die einde van Afrikaans in die universiteitswese, die era van Rama-forie, die COVID-pandemie en gepaardgaande wêreld gebeure in historiese konteks.

Dit keer telkens terug na die mikro-werklikheid van eie menswees, geloof, hartseer, eensaamheid, verlies, ouer-word en vergifnis.

Dit ondersoek ’n nuwe vryheidsideaal, 30 jaar na die verkiesing van 27 April 1994 en beskryf hoe eierigting regmatig deur instellings van die burgerlike samelewing plaasvind wat leemtes vul wat die staat ooplaat.

Die wêreld het meer sonneblommense nodig mense wat hulle koppe na die Son toe draai, mense wat meer en meer soos die Son wil wees eerder as giftige ivies, stink Afrikaners, stekelrige kaktusse, knieserige rosies of klaende hangkop wilgers.

Transformasie begin as ons ons deel begin doen en verantwoordelikheid aanvaar om ons negatiewe gedagtes elke dag bewustelik by die alomteenwoordige Son te vernuwe. Ons moet onsself daagliks toewy in die bestudering van die Meester Sonneblom se lieflike kwaliteite en meer van die vrug van sy liefdevolle genadige gees te kweek deur ons gedagtes by hom te vernuwe. Om ou negatiewe gewoontes en denke af te breek vra baie herhaling en volharding.

Kom ons maak dit ons doel om elke dag 'n rapsie meer na Jesus se voorbeeld van christenskap en menswees te lyk. Met hierdie 260 sonneblom dagstukkies nooi Susan jou uit na 'n avontuur van sonsoek al agter die Son aan.

Geniet die sonneblomreis.

This book is an original, systematic, and radical attempt at decolonizing critical theory. Drawing on linguistic concepts from 16 languages from Asia, Africa, the Arab world, and South America, the essays in the volume explore the entailments of words while discussing their conceptual implications for the humanities and the social sciences everywhere. The essays engage in the work of thinking through words to generate a conceptual vocabulary that will allow for a global conversation on social theory which will be necessarily multilingual.

With essays by scholars, across generations, and from a variety of disciplines – history, anthropology, and philosophy to literature and political theory – this book will be essential reading for scholars, researchers, and students of critical theory and the social sciences.

The power of structural violence is that it tries to silence us. The power of feminism is that it gives us a voice. So much of our life experience is filtered through our bodies – norms, myths, and cultural standards continue to shape the way that we and the world feel about our bodies and how we see ourselves.

Feminism says these rules are bullshit. Our bodies can be tools to conform or a way to resist. Feminism is necessary to help us learn and unlearn things about ourselves and the world we live in. Feminism is for all of us, for every single body.

This collection take us from an examination of skin and hair, to an exploration of pleasure, sex, and safety. They explore the way our bodies change, our health, and how we become who we are. They examine the way that institutions can trap us, how we can trap ourselves, and the importance of our hearts in all of this.

This is not a book about gardening. It's a book about becoming - wildly, messily, and against all odds.

"Sometimes I was sunshine. Sometimes I was stormy. Sometimes I was a dandelion blowing away in 20 directions at once, and other times I stood tall like a sunflower, faking confidence but rooted deep. It's a story about falling forward, laughing at bad timing, and blooming on your own weird wonderful terms."

In this bold, heartfelt, and occasionally unfiltered memoir, the author dives into the mess of becoming. A real life story of blooming through the cracks and accidentally growing a life worth loving. Wild, rooted & occasionally untamed. It's for anyone who's smiled through storms, bloomed in chaos, or grown deep roots in rocky places.

Oops! I Bloomed Again is a laugh-out-loud, tear-jerking kind of story for the ones who bloom sideways, bounce back louder, and keep showing up, even when the soil gets rough. Expect laughs. Expect tears. Expect dandelions in unexpected places.

And between the pages?

• You'll find surprising little treasures
• Playful and practical fun facts
• Heartfelt poems that grew from real moments
• Delicious recipes from life well-lived
• And "recipes for life" - the kind you don't learn in school but pick up along the way

  If you've ever been "too sensitive," "too tired," or "too much," this ones for you.

  Because growth, it's not always pretty, it's not always graceful. But it's mighty powerful and glorious. And it is yours to grow into!

Dit is normaal vir ouers om besorg te wees oor hulle kinders, veral as dit by hulle geloof kom. Daarom is dit belangrik om seker te maak hulle verstaan die Bybel en die belangrikheid daarvan sodat hulle hulle sterk kan staan in daardie moeilike tienerjare en ook die uitdagings van die volwasse lewe kan hanteer.

Die Bybel-Trivia Dagboek: 365 Dagstukke vir ’n Dag Vol Lig en Vreugde bevat 365 dagstukke vol interessante Bybelse inligting wat tieners sal uitdaag om die beginsels daarin ook in hulle eie lewe toe te pas. Deur na te dink oor Skrifgebeure, geloofshelde, wonderwerke en Bybelse plekke en gebeure, sal hulle nuwe insig kry in bekende Bybelgedeeltes. Tieners sal ontdek dat niks in die Bybel onbelangrik is nie, maar dat dit God se lewende Woord is wat hoop, vrede en lewe in oorvloed bied vir elkeen wat dit lees.

• 365 oordenkings vir tieners
• Elke dag bevat ’n teksvers, ’n interessante vraag oor die Bybel en ’n kort dagstuk om jong tieners te help om die regte antwoord te ontdek
• Dit bevat vrae oor Bybelverse, geloofshelde, wonderwerke en Bybelse plekke en gebeure
• 384 eenkleur-bladsye
• Ook beskikbaar in Engels onder die titel Bible Trivia Devotional

Sien God Se Teenwoordigheid Elke Dag In Ons Lewe Raak

Ons staan vandag voor geweldige probleme en uitdagings – ekonomies, polities, moreel, noem maar op. ’n Mens wil-wil moed verloor.

Tog is daar geen rede tot wanhoop nie. Want, sê Isak Burger, God self gee ons die versekering dat Hy by ons is. Ons is nie alleen nie. Deur sy Gees is Hy daagliks by ons en deur sy Woord lei Hy ons. Ons kan op God vertrou in elke situasie waarin ons ons bevind.

Stap in die 365 dagstukke van Veilig in sy hand deur die Bybel en ervaar opnuut hoe God by sy kinders is. Vind bemoediging vir die tye wanneer jy eensaam voel, ver van God af voel, voor groot besluite te staan kom, wonder oor God se ewigheidsplan of bloot net weer jou verhouding met God wil verdiep. Jy sal tot ’n nuwe ervaring van God se teenwoordigheid en leiding kom en die lewe met nuwe hoop en moed tegemoetgaan.

Het jy geweet die teenoorgestelde van geloof is nie twyfel nie, maar vrees? As jy angstig en bang vir die toekoms voel, sal die verhale in hierdie dagboek jou bemoedig om Jesus volkome te vertrou en daagliks sy teenwoordigheid op te soek.

Die eerste ses maande in Van vrees na vertroue: Vir elkeen wat op soek is na sekerheid in ’n wêreld vol onsekerheid en vrees bevat insigte rondom die “moenie vrees nie”-verse in die Bybel. In die laaste ses maande verskuif die perspektief na Christus en hoe ons ons vrese kan oorkom deur God al hoe meer te vertrou en ’n Christus-gesindheid te kweek deur ses spesifieke bewegings; van die afleer van onsself tot by die beliggaming van ’n nuwe skepping.

Die 365 dagstukke deel verhale en teksverse uit die Bybel, asook kosbare verhale van hedendaagse gelowiges wat God volkome vertrou het. Elke maand skop ook af met ’n spesiale sielsoefening met nadink-vrae of praktiese voorstelle. Ewald van Rensburg se unieke hart-tot-hart-skryfstyl sal jou inspireer om jou vrese vir God te gee en te sien dat Hy werklik die Een is wat ons volkome kan vertrou.

• 365 Bybelse dagstukke deur die gewilde skrywer Ewald van Rensburg
• Sielsoefening aan die begin van elke maand met nadink-vrae of praktiese voorstelle
• Bevat verskeie verhale van Bybelse en eietydse geloofshelde
• Eenkleur-drukwerk
• 392 bladsye

Ontsluit die Bybel: ’n Omvattende Studie oor die Ou en Nuwe Testament is ’n omvattende Bybelreis van Genesis tot Openbaring deur Stephan Joubert en Leonard Maré. Dié Bybelstudie sal soekendes help om dieper te delf in die kosbare waarhede van die Skrif en sodoende nuwe insigte te ontdek op hulle pad na geestelike groei. Ontsluit die Bybel bied 95 studies oor die Nuwe Testament en 71 studies oor die Ou Testament.

Deel 1 van hierdie boek bespreek: “Hoe verstaan en gebruik ons die Bybel reg?” Daarna volg die fokus op die Bybel self in Deel 2 (Ou Testament) en Deel 3 (Nuwe Testament). Die Ou en Nuwe Testament word vir die leser uitgelê deur die ontstaansituasie, opbou, hooffigure en/of hooftemas van elke Bybelboek te bespreek. Dit word afgerond deur ’n verklarende uitleg van sekere kerngedeeltes.

Ontsluit die Bybel begelei die leser in meer as 160 studies om self dieper te delf ten einde die onderskeie Bybelboeke se teologie, opbou, inhoud, doel, verhaalgang en styl te verstaan.

• Bybelstudie ideaal vir groepe of individue.
• 160 studies oor die Ou en Nuwe Testament
• Fokus op die ontstaansituasie, opbou, hooffigure en/of hooftemas van elke boek

Ontsluit die Bybel sal lesers uitdaag om die Bybel boek vir boek dieper te leer ken deur konteks te gee waarmee hulle dan groot vraagstukke kan deurdink en dieper betekenisse kan ontdek - op hul eie of saam met ander.

God’s Waiting Room: Racial Reckoning at Life’s End is a poignant and immersive exploration of life in a South African nursing home, built atop a graveyard left behind by the forced removals of apartheid. Through the lens of Casey Golomski’s seven years of immersive research, the book offers a glimpse into the lives of the residents and caregivers of “Grace” nursing home. This institution, both a symbol of apartheid’s lingering scars and a microcosm of racial, social, and generational divides, becomes a space for exploring the tensions and reconciliations that emerge at the end of life.

At its core, the book confronts the painful history of apartheid, a system of racial segregation that displaced millions and dehumanized generations. As the older white residents and younger Black caregivers co-exist within Grace, they must navigate a complex dynamic born from decades of systemic violence. Golomski reveals, through vivid conversations and reflections, how these everyday interactions become moments of racial reckoning, tempered by the shared reality of aging and mortality.

What sets God’s Waiting Room apart is its narrative form. Golomski artfully combines creative nonfiction with ethnography, weaving together the past and present of his subjects’ lives in a single day-long tour of the home. Told in breathtakingly intimate and witty conversations with the home’s residents and nurses, including the untold story of Nelson Mandela’s Robben Island prison nurse, readers learn how ageism, sexism, and racism intersect and impact health care both in South Africa and in the United States, as well as create conditions in which people primed to be enemies find grace despite the odds. The stories of seven individuals highlight the tension between care and prejudice, survival and memory, as they reckon with the apartheid era’s haunting legacy.

Written in the six weeks following the sudden death of Mat, Ferguson’s soul mate, Swift is a memoir that unfolds, breath by breath, as the narrator moves through shock, fury, unspeakable sorrow, and an almost mythic sense of responsibility to save the life of a Swift, which she rescued seven days before her beloved left Earth.

She somehow keeps the half-dead Swift alive through the blur of grief, but she has no real clue what she’s doing. Mat was the one who knew all about birds. He was the man with the heart of feathers who identified the rescue bird as a Little Swift when she brought it home. Mat told her many things about the bird: that it never touches the ground, that it eats, sleeps, drinks, and mates on the wing, and that it is a bird that can fly for up to two years without landing.

In the aftermath of his shocking departure, and all its absurd bureaucratic requirements, an unlikely long-distance Swift guide appears in Ferguson’s DMs on old Twitter. Her name is Hannah, a hardcore Swift activist from the UK. Ferguson is mesmerized by the Swift Queen’s ethereal beauty and the tattoos of Swifts across her back.